Overview
Automations in Chariot are made up of three core components:
Enrollment Trigger — The event that causes an Automation to "attach" to a Lead or Job (e.g., a new lead is created, an estimate is sent, a job is booked, you decide to manually enroll it). At that point, the Automation will start "monitoring" the Lead or Job and will complete Actions when certain conditions are met.
Actions ("Steps") — What happens when the automation fires (e.g., send an SMS, create a task, add a tag, update a stage).
Conditions (optional) — Filters that determine whether the automation should apply (e.g., only residential moves, only leads from a specific source, only moves within 30 days).
Note that Conditions can be applied to Enrollment Triggers (for example: only enroll a Lead or Job in this Automation if Customer Type = Residential) and also to Actions (send this email if it is now 3 days before the move).
There are more components as seen below, but those are the basics of what makes an Automation tick.
Enrollment Triggers
In order for Automations to work, jobs have to be enrolled in them. They can be enrolled automatically when certain conditions are met, or they can be enrolled manually in certain situations. Enrollment triggers are what tell an automation when to attach to a job.
The automation enrollment triggers include:
BOL Completed — This will enroll a job when the BOL is completed and closed out.
Estimate Declined — This will enroll a job if a customer declines their estimate.
Estimate Sent — This will enroll a job when an estimate is sent to a customer.
Estimate Signed — This will enroll a job when a customer signs their estimate.
Invoice Paid — This will enroll a job when an invoice has been sent to a customer and the payment comes through.
Lead Created — This will enroll a job when it is very first created. I.E. Every job created after the automation is published will be enrolled.
Lead Tags Edited — This will enroll a job in an automation if the lead has tags that are edited.
Liveswitch Video Uploaded — If you use the Liveswitch integration and a customer uploads a video it will then enroll the job.
Job Booked — This will enroll a job when it is changed to the job stage "Booked".
Job Confirmed — This will enroll a lead when the customer confirms their move via a link that can be sent to them.
Job Stage Changed — This will enroll a job when the stage is changed from any stage to any stage.
Sales Owner Assigned — This will enroll jobs when the sales owner is assigned.
Payment Completed — This will enroll a job when the payment is completed.
Photo Uploaded — This will enroll jobs if you send a link to allow customers to upload photos, once they use the link and finish the upload (in Chariot this is defined as when it's been 10 minutes since the last photo was uploaded) the job will be enrolled.
Review Submitted — This will enroll jobs when an internal review is submitted to Chariot.
Timeline Activity Started — This will enroll jobs when the time tracking feature is used on a job.
Invoice Sent — This will enroll jobs when the "Send Invoice" button is clicked and sent to the customer.
Manually Enrolled — This is for automations that are one offs, the jobs won't have commonality that can be tracked automatically, but you still want an action to happen automatically.
"Enroll If" Conditions
These are conditions that are applied to enrollment. They are the same conditions that can be used in the automation steps, but they are additional rules to follow. For example, if you used the enrollment condition of Review Submitted but you only want the action to happen if the review was 4 stars or above, you can define that using an Enrollment Conditions. These conditions can be applied across every automation step, or can be something checked only when first enrolling a job.
See condition section below for info on available conditions.
"Restart When" rules
These are rules, that when met, the Automation will act as if it was newly enrolled and begin the sequence again. For example, if you have a follow up sequence for estimates that are sent, and you want it to restart the follow up process if a new estimate is sent to the customer you would use the Estimate Sent restart condition.
Restart When Options:
Any Job Change — If any job change occurs, the automation will restart from its first step.
Job Booked — If the job becomes booked after an automation is enrolled it will restart the automation steps and actions.
Job Time Changed — If the job date, or time is changed the automation will restart.
Job Stage Changed — If any change happens in the job stage the automation will restart.
Review Submitted — If a review is submitted, the automation process will restart.
Estimate Signed — If a customer signs their estimate the Automation will restart and go back to step/action one.
Estimate Sent — If an estimate is sent it will restart the automation actions/steps.
Types of Actions Available
Automations can take the following types of actions:
Send Email and SMS — Can deliver an email, text, or both at the same time (here's how to build and connect these communication templates to Automations).
Create Task — Creates a task in Chariot assigned to a team member or role.
Update Stage — Moves the lead or job to a specific stage in your pipeline.
Add Tag — Applies a tag to the lead or job record.
Remove Tag — Removes a tag from the record.
Unreserve Job — Removes a job's reservation if conditions aren't met.
Send Liveswitch Link — Sends a video survey link to the customer.
Send Photo Request — Sends a photo upload request to the customer.
Send Web Form — Sends a web form link to the customer.
Send Estimate — This will automatically send the Estimate to the customer as-is.
Load Estimate Template — will load an Estimate Template automatically on the Estimate tab.
Conditions (Enrollment and Actions)
Chariot has an idea of conditions in the Automation Engine. Conditions are true/false statements that must be met in order for the desired action to take place. Conditions can be applied to the enrollment (see "Enroll If Conditions" above) or they can be added to individual actions/steps. For organization we split these conditions into 5 categories: Lead, Categories, Time-Based, Status, and Review.
Lead Conditions:
Lead Created From — This will narrow down the results that the lead was created from, allowing you to separate leads created by their first contact source.
Lead is Reserved — This is a true/false argument that allows you to define if an action should take place depending on if a lead is already reserved.
Lead Source is Any Of — This allows you to define if an action should take place depending on where it came from on your list of sources.
Tags Include Any Of — This allows you to define if an action should take place based on the structured tags you have within Chariot.
Categories Conditions:
These are based on the drop down options selected in the job.
Customer Category is Any Of — This allows you to set an action to take place based on the category of the overall customer. Example: residential, commercial, and military.
Destination Location Type is Any Of — This allows you to set a condition based on what the end location is set as.
Distance Category is Any Of — This will look at the selected distance type.
Moving Service is Any Of — This will look at the type of service selected.
Original Location Type is Any Of — Like the destination, this will look at the first location type to determine if the action should take place.
Time-Based Conditions:
These are conditions that take place based on a day, time, or time window of something happening.
Day of Week is Any Of — This will look at the day of the week before taking an action.
Time Before Move — This will look at how long before a move takes place before taking an action.
Time Since Estimate Signed — This will look at how long it has been since the estimate was signed.
Time Since Estimate Sent — This will look at how long it has been since an estimate was sent to the customer.
Time Since First Move Date — This will look at how long it has been since the first move date occurred.
Time Since Booked — This will look at how long it has been since the job was booked.
Time Since Lead Created — This will look at how long it has been since the lead was created.
Time Since Previous Step — This will look at how long it has been since the most recent action/step was taken by an automation.
Time Since Review Submitted — This will look at how long ago an internal Chariot review was submitted.
Time Since Automation Enrolled — This will look at when an automation was enrolled.
Time Since Most Recent Activity/Edit — This will look at how long it has been since the most recent activity on a job occurred. (I.E. an event on the timeline)
Status Conditions:
These are conditions that reference different job statuses that may exist.
Deposit Not Paid — This will reference if a customer's estimate was set to require a deposit and whether that deposit was paid.
Estimate Declined — This will look at if an estimate was declined.
Estimate Not Declined — This will look at if an estimate was not declined.
Has Upcoming Survey — This will look at a job and see if an upcoming survey has been associated with it.
Job Balance is Greater Than 0 — This will check if a job has a balance on the results page of greater than zero.
Job Estimate Differs From Result — This will compare the estimate total to the results total and see if there is a difference.
Job Has Any Charges on Result — This will look to see if a job has results input into it.
Job Stage is Any Of — This will check if a job is in a certain stage/stages before taking action.
Job Stage is Booked or Booked* — This is a narrower version of the above, looking only at if a job is in booked or booked* stage.
Review Conditions:
These are conditions based on internal reviews a customer has left.
Review Star Rating Is — This will allow you to apply automations to jobs that had a star rating from the customer of exactly a number.
Review Star Rating is Less Than — This will look at if a review is less than something before enrolling.
Example: Creating a New Automation From Scratch
Go to the Automations tab in your left navigation menu.
Click New Automation in the upper right and select Build From Scratch.
Give your automation a clear name and an optional (but recommended) description so your team knows what it does.
Select an Enrollment Trigger — this is the event in Chariot that kicks off the automation.
(Optional) Set a Re-enrollment trigger — this restarts the automation from the beginning if the trigger fires again (e.g., a new estimate is sent after the first one was already signed).
(Optional) Add Conditions to narrow which leads or jobs qualify. For example: only apply this automation if the job type is "Residential," or only if the move date is within 14 days.
Add one or more Actions. Each action can have its own timing (e.g., immediately, after 2 hours, after 1 day).
Click Save. Note: saving does not activate the automation — you'll publish it separately when ready.
Click Publish — this will activate the automation and let it start taking action.
Tips for Building Effective Automations
Use clear, descriptive names (e.g., "Follow Up – Signed Estimate, No Deposit – 2 Hours")
Add conditions to avoid sending irrelevant communications to the wrong lead types
Double-check timing on each action before publishing
Consider starting with a Blueprint instead of from scratch — Blueprints are pre-built for the most common moving company workflows